


Small Comfort

by bmouse



Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: Canon Disabled Character, FIx It, First Time, M/M, Mention of past dub-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-22
Updated: 2014-09-22
Packaged: 2018-02-18 08:54:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2342525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bmouse/pseuds/bmouse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They say first times aren’t the greatest, but this is ridiculous! Which is worse? A girl that fetishizes your disability or an amoral woman who’s pretending to love you because she wants to take over your Empire? Another night in an ImpSec basement, another bottle of wine. As usual, Miles ignores the unspoken rules of the universe and demands a ‘do over.’ For the both of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Small Comfort

**Author's Note:**

> So I had just finished "The Vor Game" and Miles/Gregor seemed like a perfectly good idea at the time.

"You must admit, this set of bottles finds us in slightly better circumstances than the last one."

These ones were also supplied by his mother, but as a sort of “welcome home, thanks for not upsetting the power balance in the system” kind of way, as opposed to “cheer up after you almost got court-martialed” and damn if it doesn't make the wine sweeter. 

In rare form, Gregor - veteran of childhood poison-tastings had polished off more than Miles, who through his own rising haze still managed to notice and guess at the reason. Their conversation so far had been light - the kind of ‘back to life’ nothing-topics that were indulged in by men who just as easily might not have lived to see the week or the wine. Still, a cautious man only drank like that when he had something on his mind. After a moment, finding his glass empty, Gregor shrugged and took a pull from the bottle, thoughtfully licked the rim, and with the next words out of his mouth proved him right.

“You know, I've read those books; where the intrepid hero - Officer So and So. is seduced by the Fatal Lady. It never lasts, of course. Some kind of true love archetype is waiting in the wings but as you're reading it, it seems so forbidden and exciting. I wondered, you know - during, if some time and distance would make it feel like that, wash out the details where it wasn’t...”

He stared into the fire, the bottle dangling loosely in his grip. “But no, I suppose I’m getting better at dodging revisionist history. Even my own.”

“I was under siege, you know? I couldn't relax for a minute, couldn't process it. I supposed this is the sort of thing I would want to brag about later, when I'm out of earshot of my officially prescribed wife… But now I rather think I won't mention it to anyone.” 

Miles winced. He’d been dreading this conversation as much as he was hoping Gregor would acknowledge it. You’d think a handsome royal could manage a discrete affair or two after seventeen but Gregor had always been in a class of his own - too good for droit-de-seigneur aristocratic barbarism and too gun-shy for anything else. His friend had deserved better than to have the terms and the choice of it stolen away. 

A sharp pang of melancholy wormed its way through war-elation and wine-fog, directly into his chest. It seemed ridiculous. Gregor was Vor. A field-tested officer! Not some blushing tender maiden picking nosegays in seclusion on the mountainside before the inevitable ravishment of a bawdy backcountry song. But then again, they were all fragile young men, weren’t they. That was the unspoken thing everyone at the Academy fought so hard to forget. Miles just had a head start on confronting his fragility, in more or less every way. 

“My first time was crap too.” 

Well he was in for it now. That was not a sentence that would be allowed to stand alone in this conversation. His friend the wine suddenly turned on him, and pinned by his friend Gregor's wide hazel eyes (the light brown in them was almost yellow in the firelight in a way that abruptly reminded him of Bothari) he stumbled out the story of the Betan girl. And every turn of phrase that was meant to be ironic, to make the whole thing somehow funny: "cripple-mutie can't even get laid right on the free-love world" broke on his tongue and came out in jumbled earnest pieces. 

Gregor listened gravely, the way he did at meetings that decided the fate of planets, listened with his whole body.

“What did you do, afterwards?”

"Um, botched slitting my wrists? No one can ever tell, really - with all the other surgery scars. On bad days I get this awful feeling that Mother knows." 

“I’ll tell her.” Gregor said. “When I see her, I’ll tell her about mine and then we’ll be even. I’m not even especially ashamed anymore, not the way I still am for running away. I should have remembered my history: Vorkalin, General Vorgogol, Vorchenko in exile before his reinstatement. We’re in a good company, Miles.“ 

Miles raised his glass.

“To all of us, who didn’t succeed.”

They drank.

“And you were right,” Gregor went on. “Life comes back into focus if you give it some time. If you step back from the original condition.”

He set the bottle down decisively, but with the exaggerated care of someone who was very aware he’d been drinking.

“Things are much better now. I think I'm learning to direct myself better.”

The way his chin lifted, just a touch, but like a person who was stating a certainty not arguing a cause and the animated purpose in his voice made Miles sigh with relief. It was easy, in his experience, to feel quite a lot better soon afterwards; life unfolding again in its myriad ways etc. etc. But to sustain one’s armor against a sadness that knew you to be suited to its taste, a person needed something more long-standing. Ruling, the very thing Gregor had been conceived for and studied for and dreaded, might just be the thing to keep him fighting.

“It’s a shame though. Everything is looking up except this one thing. They’ll want me married off soon. That’s been on the books as an effective distraction for young rulers grabbing more bit than their councils are used to and let me tell you, some of the Counts are looking at me as if they really wished they were your father and pulling on the reins. “ His lips flattened in a grimace, which faded as he went on.

“Certainly both participants in a convenient marriage have been known to enjoy _liberties_ , but not at my level. Affairs breed political instability. My father's precedent…” he gestured with his hand, as if waving the thought into the fire.

“It’s just, there it was. And worse, now it feels like that was my last chance. You know? I’m convinced no one will ever touch me again except as an unavoidable step of reaching for the Imperium.”

"I would." 

Miles said it without hope or agenda. It was just the kind of ridiculous thing you said to a friend as you saw them hurting, keeping company with “It’ll be allright, you’ll see.” and “I’ll follow you until the end!” but once it was out of his mouth he knew that it was true.

Gregor looked at him, without quite knowing it skewered him with his own variant of Ezar Vorbarra’s thousand-light-year stare, and Miles sat there, paralyzed as a fieldmouse in front of an owl, thinking. _Wait, he can’t actually..._

He was though. Miles had a hefty ancestral power of his own and his mother’s instincts for what people might do in any given moment told him that Gregor was weighing opportunity, timing, and cross-referencing the sadly brief roster of people he trusted. Somehow Miles was pretty sure carnal attraction was dangling at the bottom of the list.

Miles-the-person firmly divorced once again from Miles-the-body. _Well that’s par for the course isn’t it._ he thought _This isn’t about me, not really_ and greedily, with a touch of shame _I'll take whatever I can get_. The same thing that waltzed him breakneck along in the arms of forward momentum did not stop to think that two inexperienced young men, regardless of any innate bisexual tendencies, could make such a hash of this that being in the same advisor meetings could be squirmingly awkward for years to come.

Paltry speculation didn’t carry an inch on Gregor unbuttoning the first round pearly button of his shirt, having somehow already undone the jacket while Miles was busy running circles in his head.

The firelight caught the soft feathered edges of his hair. He hadn't had a chance to cut it since their misadventure. Seeing it wind-blown in the Victory/Alliance vids must have snatched up the heart of many a Vervain girl. 

Bugger the Vor tradition, if the propaganda stylist team had any sense they would keep it. The green coat slipping off his shoulder as if in a painting, the white shirt, the fire-gilded eyes; he was like a sad prince out of a fairy tale. No - a young, bothersome, breathtaking king. 

Miles wanted to kneel and he wanted to do something outrageous to erase that still, dignified expression which meant Gregor was really nervous as bedamned.

Kneeling was an involved process, even with the leg braces. _God, no wonder I'm chronically-insubordinate, I literally can’t bend the knee. Next time I see him I'll tell Simon to pay for my bone replacements and in return he’ll get the perfect obedient Lieutenant. I'll be so eager to test them out I'll kowtow to anyone in sight!_ And oh, his brain was running away from him, wheels spinning frantically and he wrestled it firmly back to the present. No. No kneeling yet. Definitely kissing first.

Miles stepped out of his chair and since Gregor was still sitting down, he could step over put a hand on his cheek, lean in and cover his mouth. Here was definitely the area where he had the most experience and Gregor, though he'd made such great strides lately, was so very used to being led. 

Behind him the fire crackled, maybe it was laughing at his audacity. At the odd picture they must have made: Miles, for the first time in his life at a higher elevation than the person he was kissing, bent over like a pilgrim to a basin. An impudent Subject taking into himself some of the Emperor's sacred, wine-scented breath. No, not the Emperor - Gregor. Who was coming unfrozen, whose mind had made sense of the fact that this was happening and had given tentative approval to proceed.

The warmth, the pressure of their lips, the sound as they separated for a split second and then, yes! Gregor leaned in and took the second kiss for himself. Miles made an approving murmur in his throat. His hand, never stopping at inches when further lengths were to be had, traced back up Gregor’s cheek, under his ear and sunk into the downy hair at the back of his neck. Miles was so pleased from the combined signals from hand and lips, the heat from the fire along his back, the warm-safe body at the front that when a shy, hesitant tongue dipped into his mouth for a taste he didn't think he just accelerated, kissing him deeper and deeper, pressing into him. He stopped when he ran out of breath.

"You wanna keep going?" Miles’ lips were wet, his voice was rasping in some deep unplumbed register, and his tailored pants were well on their way to painful tightness but this was important. Somehow he didn't think consent featured heavily in the sex Gregor had been having lately. 

“This isn’t strange to you _at all_?” 

“Honestly, no. Not really. You’re handsome and your lips are soft.” Wonderful, babbling now seemed to be in play. “Kissing, just kissing someone I like is pretty great and anyway, no pressure.”

“I suppose your flexibility comes from your mother’s heritage.” Gregor’s hand crept up to his neck to fiddle with a cravat that he himself had taken off hours ago. It was funny how he always got ponderous and formal when didn’t quite know what to say. Endearing, even.

“Ha! I think you mean my _father_. He was half and half for lovers as far as I know.”

Oh now that was priceless. Gregor’s flushed, red-lipped face was a study in shock. Miles imagined he could see vast glaciers of presumed fact about the mighty and devoutly centrist Aral Vorkosigan breaking apart and slipping down into a sea of understanding. Oddly enough it also seemed to help Gregor make up his mind.

“Yes.”

He swallowed, Miles could feel the tremor of it through the hand that was still on his shoulder 

“Yes, let’s… keep going.”

At least Miles could cling to the fact that this was the field where he had the clear advantage. Once burned twice shy didn't really apply to him. As soon as the self-pity was no longer crippling he had watched all the male-to-female Betan educational vids he could get a hold of. There was no sacred mystery anymore, only a subject to be studied, tactics to review, hopefully non-theoretical situations to prepare for. Afterwards, with a little bit of trepidation he had watched the male-to-male and male-to-hermaphrodite ones too, just in case his father’s orientation would prove hereditary. 

This though, wow, oh wow, well this was a thing to do and do right. He should make it good, but not fast to cover his own insecurities, not something perfunctory. Though not so slow that he would lose momentum and no showing off some fancy thing he’d only read about and never tried. 

Tricky to keep all that in mind when Gregor’s fingers were working the fasteners of his coat with some determination. Gregor was still a little wide-eyed but, as a glance into his lap assured him, not at all disinterested.

Miles kissed him again, ending with a sly swipe of tongue against the back of his teeth to reward him for his initiative and caught his wrists as soon as he’d finished unbuttoning his jacket.

“Good idea, give me your coat too.”

He dropped both coats to the floor between Gregor’s knees, distracting him successfully by nosing at his neck, nipping at his collarbone. Gregor’s shirt had resisted unbuttoning bravely but it was down to its last two men and the chest it was barely clinging to was smooth and hairless as a museum statue’s. It was quivering as Miles kissed his way down. Pink, prettily peaked, his nipples just looked so interesting even though they were clearly not girl-nipples and it was a crime because Miles was _so ready_ to lick and suckle and tease but damn it, no, because nothing was easy with his people. Though he’d never think of Gregor as the type to get angry over being treated ‘like a woman’ in bed the goal was to tiptoe _through_ the minefield of Barrayaran gender enforcement and sexual politics so he settled on catching one of those little nubs ‘accidentally’ with the tip of his nose on his way down and hiding his pleased expression in the angle of his head as Gregor writhed in his chair.

Of course no good plan can go uncontested because Gregor then got the strange idea that he should maybe get up. 

“No, stay there.” And the look on his face, was perfect, was awed almost as Miles braced both hands on his thighs and slid slowly to his knees. The coats had been an inspired idea - he could barely feel the floor and he estimated he could stay like this for fifteen minutes at least before he would start to feel any pain. Not that he would need all of that time, Gregor would never last that long. 

“Really, you want to?” his voice was rough but Gregor’s eyes on his face were searching. Miles would have kissed him again for asking but that would have involved standing up.

“Mm, yeah.” 

Their hands met, tangled around each other undoing his belt. 

_Well it’s a good thing I depilated this morning or I’d be giving the Emperor beard burn_ Miles thought slightly hysterically, a few seconds later as he nosed the base of Gregor’s prick and then took a long lick up the underside to lip at the head, taking the gasp above him as his due applause. Gregor was proportional certainly, nothing to be ashamed of, which made him, proportionally to Miles - somewhat large _but my mouth is well exercised isn’t it, I can manage._ Yes, that fit quite nicely.

_Was this, **is** this still considered humiliating in some places?_

Miles clearly had all the power here, and like any time he got a hold of power he had to use it all at once, to revel in it before another turn of the wheel took it away. He reveled. Gregor cried out, louder this time. There was a rustle of cloth and soon the familiar barracks-born sound of a man trying to muffle pleasure-moans with a fistful of fabric. Gregor’s thighs trembled and tried to close, trembled again as he worked to keep them open, to keep from crushing Miles too hard and that was him all over wasn’t it. 

He tried to make a tighter seal with his lips, tried to find a rhythm, and it worked, it was working for him too (glorious torture how he had to balance with his other hand and couldn’t touch himself) maybe because Gregor’s prick was warmer and more alive-tasting than the toy Miles had once practiced this on. None of the vids had mentioned how it would strain and leap in his mouth. How his thighs would cord and tense until they felt like stone. How it would taste. 

Gregor’s hand dug painfully into his shoulder, then let go as if he’d been burned. A second later it returned to stroke Miles’ hair, his cheek as Gregor whispered ‘Miles! I’m-” and Miles felt godlike and mildly apprehensive and a little sad that it would be over so soon. He twisted with the hand that was wrapped around the base, held still, swallowed. 

Afterward he leaned his head against Gregor’s thigh and let himself have a rest, tongue working around the flavor in his mouth. Gregor’s hand was still in his hair, his lips felt stretched and tingled faintly. Looking up he found that Gregor had gone from pink, sweat-sheened, and attractively gasping to a focused intensity. 

"Your turn." he said.

“Um, sure yeah.” 

Right. Turns. Miles would also get a turn, how very egalitarian of them. Oh Gregor wouldn’t have to do much, breathe on him maybe.

"In the bed, for you." Now that sounded like an order.

Miles was going to protest, even opened his mouth to do it and then, realizing that it was absolutely true - nothing grand-finale esque was going to happen with him scrunched into a chair without even lumbar support - promptly shut it. 

Carefully he got up and turned toward the bed, letting Gregor rise from the chair and shuffle awkwardly out of pants and boots with some illusion of privacy. The sight of his bare flank: muscular, lightly hairy calves and a shapely ass managed to be alluring, acutely erotic even, in the soft light of the fire and Miles took the opportunity to give himself a rub through his unzipped fly. Yes, yes, attraction to men definitely confirmed - double chances from here on out. He tried not to feel too pleased with himself.

Egalitarianism dictated he should probably finish taking off his shirt now. Really he’d rather not but that was ridiculous wasn’t it, to balk at this one thing having done the other so he did it - mechanically, like a cadet preparing for bed. He was folding it for lack of anything else to do with his hands when Gregor’s warm palm traced up his twisted spine and Gregor’s warm lips softly, almost chastely, kissed the side of his too-short neck. 

They ended up on top of the blanket, Miles still in his pants with Gregor naked over him and a gentleman to the last - taking the weight on his elbows and knees. They hadn’t shared a bed since they were children but instead of a vague taint of incestuousness the thought made him feel safe. They were children again almost, Gregor tentatively blew air into his ear, startling a laugh out of him and making squirm and then got distracted kissing the line of his jaw.

In retaliation Miles wound an arm around his waist and let the other one feel it's way along his side to cup and then firmly grope his ass. This got him a scratchy-voiced scandalized "Miles!" but Gregor was well - squirming, frankly, and not in the 'let me go' fashion. 

He could feel him hardening again against his thigh. Because he was sadly lacking in self control Miles put his other hand on the other asscheek, which left Gregor bent in an awkward way, but Gregor’s wasn’t someone who’d spent his life in hostile negotiations with his spine so he folded well and continued kissing him with that deceptive softness that built and built and left Miles whining. With his two warm handfuls Miles thought that if he pulled a little he could probably get enough friction to get himself off without even taking off his pants. 

Which was kind of a pity. The room was so warm with the heat of them and the fire that the pants and socks felt scratchy, unnecessary. But had already been so good, so much better than he'd hoped for: Gregor's body above him, his eager tongue on his skin, his hair touching Miles' cheek. 

 

\- - -

 

Gregor cannot afford to be one thing, he is a politician and a soldier. He is different from the men who wear their offices like a sash of frippery, who are only soldiers at heart. For him a good compromise, a reciprocity, is also a definition of victory and his eyes are kindly disposed to less-than-perfect truths. He can see how Miles is nervous, not _during_ but now that he has given satisfaction, the way Gregor himself had been unsure... and that he will not allow. 

He takes off Miles’ pants, and then his leg braces, they feel warm in his hands. He kisses the arch of his foot, for once completely unaware of how this would look to the legions of Vorkosigan-plot theorists, here he's just a young man kissing the person he's bare and in bed with. 

Miles’ legs are knotty and discolored with old breaks. The little bruise-imprints from the braces may as well be tattooed on. He licks over them gently on his way up to the inside of the knee. What he touches on one leg with his mouth he tries to touch with his hand on the other. 

The skin is so pale and so thin. He finds very faint freckles hiding on his inner thighs as he moves up. He does the things he had imagined doing to another person but that were too graceless for his recent role, too _him_ , and not the Emperor. 

Gregor almost gets lost in it but then he remembers and has to look up to make sure that what he’s doing is wanted.

For all he gets stubble faster and, for all his pain-lines and experience right now Miles looks his proper age - five years younger than Gregor, young and suddenly innocent. He has beautiful eyelashes, the edges of them shining and wet. Small sounds rattle in his chest. His hips are rolling helplessly upwards, the person who controlled the fleet is in Gregor's hands, trusting himself to his will. 

Gregor moves on pure instinct and whatever his sex-fogged brain can recall about Miles’ example, he fits his mouth wetly around the head takes as much as he can inside. It's difficult, keeping his jaw wide and his teeth covered but he he thinks Miles forgives him. It doesn’t take long. In the end he is a little unprepared and doesn’t quite catch all the seed in his mouth and has to wipe his belly clean. When he makes his way back up Miles’ face is beautific and still, and slightly pained - like a stained-glass saint’s.

Slight as Miles is Gregor’s shoulders aren’t especially wide, holding him fully in his arms is more logistically challenging than he would have thought. The diplomat in Gregor also suggests that wouldn't strike the right tone, and Miles still looks too damn destroyed for conversation so he carefully gathers him up and rolls him unresisting on top until they're chest to chest, sealing the two of them into a warm sweaty cocoon of blankets and nearly-grown men. 

Miles' toes are somewhere around his calves and the top of his head is tucked under his chin. It's not completely comfortable but the weight isn't bad, Gregor can breathe. He feels vast and powerful to enclose him all, to be able to hold him like this. 

"...mmm, thanks. ", Miles mutters, still on the way to full consciousness. "I cramp up if I sleep on my back." 

After a handful of breaths he recognizes the feeling of being looked at intensely by Miles Naismith Vorkosigan in the dark. 

“Hey, you know I…” Miles begins, hushed.

“I know.” he says.

Gregor looks at the ceiling, listening to the crackling of the dying fire. The candles have burned down. The room is nearly dark now, soothing and orange-red. 

Another of the things that had been haunting him: his father's perversions, how damnably easy it had been to fall into step with that woman has been broken and banished tonight. He _can_ do this the right way, the honorable way. Miles has managed to save him again. 

 

~


End file.
